Last month I spent
a day at the "Classicalive"
exhibition at Olympia in London. There
was a very interesting range of stalls
covering all the things one might expect
(instruments, audio equipment, disc,
scores, books etc.) and others that
were less obvious (e.g. music therapy).
I spent part of the day helping out
at the English Music Festival
stall. The Festival is seeking to establish
a regular annual week of live performances
in and around Dorchester Abbey in Oxfordshire
starting in October 2006 (see link 1).
MusicWeb reviewer Em Marshall is the
driving force behind this enterprise
and some very interesting programmes
have been put together. There seems
little doubt that, nowadays, English
music is getting a very raw deal in
performing terms and there is no jingoism
here. It is fine to love music from
all around the world but who is going
to support local heritage if people
in this part of the world don’t? On
the stall Em had assembled a very long
list of worthwhile English composers
and the names of others kept cropping
up as the day progressed. The main focus
at the moment seems to be on early 20th
century music. If you are at all interested
in this repertoire I urge you to contact
Em through the EMF website (link 1)
and offer whatever help you can.

One of the pleasures
of the day was meeting Ian Boughton,
grandson of Rutland and secretary of
the Rutland Boughton Music
Trust (see link 2). It reminded me how
fine the 3rd symphony is
and re-listening to this was an urgent
priority when I returned. I bought this
on a Hyperion disc conducted by Vernon
Handley when it was new in the late
1980s. Now it is available on the budget
Helios label (CDH55019) coupled to the
Oboe Concerto No 1 - English music at
its best for a few pounds. Ian told
me that there are exciting developments
on the way for those who admire this
composer. John Wallace has made a recording
his Trumpet Concerto (dubbing it the
Trumpet Concerto that Elgar never wrote)
which will be released soon. Furthermore
the first symphony is to be performed
for the first time in 100 years in Hertfordshire
in November. Boughton wrote three symphonies
in all and I meant to ask Ian about
the second but the day flew past all
too quickly.

I should also mention
the live performances at the exhibition.
An interesting range of short recitals
had been put together and I was fortunate
to catch the current and a former BBC
Young Musician of the Year – i.e. Nicola
Benedetti and Emma Johnson. It has to
be said that the conditions for these
performances must have been amongst
the worst they have ever played in (the
"concert hall" was made of
tarpaulin and all manner of background
noise was audible) but they coped fantastically.
The highlight of Miss Benedetti’s programme
was the Havanaise by Saint-Saëns.
It is hard to believe that this young
lady is only 17, a big future seems
assured. Amongst all the winners of
the BBC Young Musician competition I
have seen, Emma Johnson’s winning performance
(of Crusell’s Clarinet Concerto No 2)
sticks most clearly in the mind. Now
just over 20 years later it was good
to hear her live. Finger-work and footwork
were fabulous (and I am not joking about
the latter!). She performed music by
Finzi and Poulenc
and a medley in the style of Benny Goodman,
and was superbly accompanied by John
Lenehan. The Flight of the Bumble
Bee served as a memorable brief
encore.

Back at the ranch,
the big event for me this month has
been Simon Rattle’s new recording of
Mahler’s 8th
symphony (see link 3). Critical opinion
has generally been favourable – both
MusicWeb and the Gramophone had
it as a Recording of the Month – "arguably
the best since Solti" said the
latter. I would go further because I
clearly prefer it to the Solti. There
is no doubt that some of the solo singing
is not quite at the same level but in
terms of choral singing, interpretation
and recording it seems to me superior.
Although about three minutes faster
the Rattle doesn’t feel rushed but unfolds
naturally. By the side of this there
seems to be something artificial about
Solti’s performance and recording. Rattle’s
may be a patch up of more than one performance
but, for me, this is live recording
at its best and the sound is fabulous.
In his review Tony Duggan noted that
he couldn’t tell that it is a live performance.
I couldn’t either but that’s fine by
me.

A composer whose music
I have enjoyed discovering lately is
the Scottish-born Victorian composer
and pianist of Italian origin Eugen
d’Albert. In particular I have
been listening to his two piano concertos
and solo piano music from two Hyperion
discs (CDA66747 and CDA66945), both
with Piers Lane at the keyboard. The
first is part of the label’s excellent
series of Romantic Piano Concertos.
The first concerto is on a very large
scale and was written when d’Albert
was 20 years old. The second is much
tauter and well worth hearing. On the
second disc there is a substantial sonata
dating from the same year as the second
concerto (1893) and the varied and attractive
8 Klavierstücke Op.5. Piers Lane
is an excellent advocate for the composer
(as he his for other rarely heard music
on this label).

Over Easter the BBC
scheduled TV broadcasts of the first
two parts of Wagner’s
Ring i.e. Das Rheingold and Die
Walküre from the Royal Opera
House Covent Garden. I heard a radio
broadcast of the former in January and
therefore merely recorded that for future
listening, keeping the afternoon and
evening of Easter Monday free for Part
2. Disappointment – Bryn Terfel’s voice
was on the blink again and, whilst the
show had to go on in the Opera House,
TV viewers got Act I only (in which
Wotan doesn’t appear). Acts II and III
are now scheduled for May. The first
act was well played and sung but visually
unremarkable except when Nothung seemed
to fall out of the "tree"
for Siegmund.

For much more controversial
Wagner, it is a short stroll from Covent
Garden to the Coliseum where the English
National Opera is further ahead in the
Ring stakes and now staging Twilight
of the Gods (see link 4 for Marc
Bridle’s detailed review). This made
news headlines in the UK because of
Brünnhilde’s suicide bombing at
the end but at least that was in keeping
with the rest of this production of
the Ring. Apparently there were some
boos on the first night but none the
following Saturday evening when I was
there. I suspect that the level of performance
had also moved up a gear, certainly
the orchestral playing maintained a
pretty high standard throughout. Paul
Daniel has grown in stature as the cycle
has progressed and it is pity that his
departure soon will presumably mean
that he will not conduct a complete
cycle (i.e. one that can be seen over
a few days). As Marc indicated, Gidon
Saks as Hagen and Kathleen Broderick
as Brünnhilde were both excellent,
and I was also impressed with chorus
in Act II. Having seen the whole cycle
over a period of more than a year there
was certainly a feeling of finality
at the end. This may not have been the
greatest of Ring’s but the opportunity
to see it live doesn’t come around too
often and, overall, it was well worthwhile.

I have spent quite
a lot of time listening to Bruckner
recently, in particular Daniel Barenboim’s
Berlin symphony cycle which was recently
released in a bargain box. This generally
exceeded expectations and proved to
be time well spent (see link 5 for a
detailed review). The late secular (and
rather Wagnerian) choral work Helgoland,
included as a fill-up in the set, was
a new discovery for me. Aside from the
symphonies, almost all Bruckner’s output
is choral, the most important exception
being the String Quintet which was written
in 1879 between the Fifth and Sixth
symphonies. Although rather symphonic
in scale and approach, it is work of
much beauty, particularly in the third
movement adagio. Recordings of it are
not plentiful but MDG have recently
issued a new version by the Leipzig
String Quartet (MDG 307 1297-2). Although
good, this is not as fine as the classic
Vienna Philharmonic Quintet version
of 1974 - that has greater intensity
in the adagio. The coupling of the Leipzig
version is, however, most welcome –
Bruckner’s early (and only) String Quartet
of 1862. I hadn’t heard it since the
days of LP and it is a finer work than
I had remembered.

In last month’s log
I commented on some recordings of the
month that others had reviewed. This
time I got one myself – the two piano
version of Shostakovich’s
Fourth Symphony (see link 6). I also
felt extremely privileged and humble
to be reviewing a superb disc of Rachmaninov’s
early solo piano music played
by Vladimir Ashkenazy (link 7). Ian
Bostridge’s second take on Schubert’s
song cycle Die schöne Mullerin
was another recording of the month in
March (see link 8) and I received a
second review copy. It was fascinating
comparing this with his earlier version
- both are first-rate (link 9).

Finally, I should mention
MusicWeb’s April Fools
(links 10-14). It is clear that Len
and others take this very seriously
and this year they came up with an interesting
range. These varied from the hilarious
but totally implausible (the Old Trafford
Mahler 8 and Shirley Bassey singing
Strauss’s Four Last Songs in
1955) through Bill Kenny’s Glastonbury
Parsifal (which might have seemed
possible after their staging of ENO’s
The Valkyrie last year) to the
tricky indeed Toscanini at Bayreuth
in 1930. Added spice was provided by
two real reviews that looked like they
could have been spoofs – Elgar’s First
Symphony on a full price disc from an
little known German orchestra (link
15) and a Richard Strauss setting of
Alfred Tennyson (link 16). April 1 is
a Saturday next year but I can’t imagine
that will be an insuperable obstacle,
the plotting has doubtless already begun!

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